


Spontaneous Acts of Entropy

by lightbouquet (Idiosyncrasies)



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Fix-It, M/M, Not Season/Series 05 compliant, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2020-01-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:34:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22326436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Idiosyncrasies/pseuds/lightbouquet
Summary: Quentin has spent two years languishing in the Underworld while his friends play a deadly game of thrones on the fractured political landscape of the hedge witches. Eliot has not given up on Quentin, but he can't bring Quentin back alone. Persephpone might be able to make things right before it's too late.
Relationships: Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Comments: 10
Kudos: 24





	Spontaneous Acts of Entropy

**Author's Note:**

> In which Persephone does not die, and Quentin does not get on the train, so there's a chance that things can be alright in the end. Mostly.

Quentin wanted a book on fidgeting. Specifically, one on _how_ , if he _did not have a body_ , he could fidget all the time. Death was the end, he thought; at least a moratorium. A goddamn _break_ from being like this all the time.

When he first asked about this book, Quentin found Kevin, a bony, milquetoast man who seemed to be permanently attached to a book cart. Kevin did not seem to want to be there anymore than Quentin did. All the motions of making a loan request took approximately 300 years, and at the end of it, Kevin unrolled his parchment, offered the most insincere smile Quentin had ever seen, and said they didn’t have such knowledge. If Kevin really wanted an enemy for all of eternity, Quentin would be happy to oblige. Better to actively hate someone than drift aimlessly through the aisles forever.

Quentin settled for Lewis Carroll.

The squeaking of Kevin’s cart was a metronome tracking how long it took Quentin to find an empty table (which was cold under his fingers, but how?). Quentin made sure to drag his chair as loudly as he could, and drop his book even louder. Kevin finally stopped.

“Why are you even here?” he asked from an aisle somewhere behind Quentin.

“That’s above my pay grade,” Quentin droned. “And yours.”

Kevin was unfazed. “People usually _go_ somewhere, you know. A waiting room. A field. A bowling alley.”

“I know.”

Kevin was quiet for a few blissful seconds at a time, punctuated by the shelving of books.

“Ooh,” he went on. “You fucked up, didn’t you. You’re on house arrest. Somebody upstairs - downstairs - wants you on a leash.”

“I would rather die a second time than continue this conversation, thank you.”

“But what did you _do_?”

“I–” Quentin didn’t have the answer. When he tried to think of something before he found himself on the elevator, he couldn’t picture anything. It was all in pieces. Just feeling. Julia. Alice. Eliot.

Eliot.

Kevin’s cart began to squeak its way toward him again. Quentin looked over his shoulder to lob out a defense, but Kevin froze mid-step.

“–What?”

Quentin narrowed his eyes, but that didn’t make things any more sensible. He felt something behind him and straightened himself out. A woman was standing on the other side of his table. Quentin nearly fell out of his chair.

“Jesus!”

“Oh,” she said. “Thank you, no.”

She wasn’t _that_ tall, but Quentin’s brain kept insisting that she nearly reached the ceiling. Her skin was flawless, dark canvas onto which someone had painted a delicate white dress.

“You. Julia told me about you,” Quentin said. “Persephone.”

She nodded. “That’s the one.”

Anger clawed up through Quentin’s throat. All the things Persephone had done to Julia were more than enough, but then there was _all_ the gods and all the things they had done. Quentin opened his mouth and Persephone cut him off.

“I know you must be angry –”

“No shit.”

“– but I thought you might like to see something, and we don’t have much time.”

“No.” Quentin didn’t remember getting to his feet, but he was there. “Not until you admit that you played us. You played _all_ of us! Do we even matter to you? Did _Julia_ ever matter to you?”

“You need to understand, we didn’t have a choice–”

“That’s bullshit! You have more choices than any of us ever had! You’re _Our Lady of the **Fucking** Underground_; you could wipe the Underworld clean and start over! You could do The Big Bang part two. You want to fucking tell me you needed a bunch of humans to clean up your mess?”

“Quentin, you don’t know what The Monsters were capable of.”

“I’m pretty sure I do!”

There was no forgetting that distant stare on Eliot’s face; the way his head tilted to the side when Quentin did something The Monster thought was cute; the way The Monster made Eliot’s beautiful, delicate fingers a vice around Quentin’s neck.

“It’s easy for you to say we have no idea when you were _hiding_. Did you see what The Monster did to him? Do you care?”

Persephone finally looked away for a moment. Quentin wondered if gods could feel ashamed.

“I’m sorry,” she said. She clasped her hands and wrung them out. “Do you know why you’re here?”

Quentin’s mouth hung open and Persephone frowned. He hated that he could see her realizing she was right in real time: he didn’t know.

“You gave your life for us.”

It was a gut punch. The explosion; the sound of glass falling everywhere. Nothingness. And then the elevator. Persephone’s hand settled atop his and he felt warm for the first time in so long. When had she moved? Maybe that was how gods worked; maybe that was how death worked.

“My husband is keeping you in this monotony so that you forget,” Persephone said gently. “You’ve been fighting with Kevin every day for two years.”

What was the point of being dead if you could still feel sick?

“It’s never gonna fucking stop, is it? You’re never going to leave us alone.”

“I’m trying to help. Could you at least come see what I have to show you?”

Quentin gritted his teeth. With her wounded voice, her white dress, and her big, sad eyes, Persephone was an idol of guilt. A mother begging to kiss her child’s knee to make it better when all the kid wants is a bandage and a promise that it’ll never happen again.

“Show me,” Quentin said, despite himself.

“Thank you.”

All at once, The Library was gone.

* * *

A breeze swirled through the park, but Quentin couldn’t feel it. He had to watch it in the movement of the leaves, and in the way a passing woman pulled her coat around herself. Some schmuck had built a hedge wall in the middle of the park, with a gap on every side so pedestrians could walk through and stare at a bronze statue of a man. Every so often, someone stopped to lean against the bricks on the outside of the hedge.

A few children were chasing each other in an endless loop around the hedge, paying absolutely no mind to Quentin, or to Persephone, who kept her hand on his arm the whole time. When the children passed Quentin a third time, he wondered why none of them tried to walk through the crosswalk and cut the others off. Then he realized: there was no one visiting the statue. No one using the crosswalk at all.

Being dead had made him stupid.

“They can’t see the walkway,” Quentin muttered to himself. Then, to Persephone: “You brought me up here to show me that there’s magic in Brooklyn? I knew that.”

Persephone shook her head. She turned slowly to look at the statue, so Quentin followed.

It was a statue of him, stood tall to face the setting sun with a smile on his face. He held a stack of books flat against his side with one hand while the other held a backpack strap. The whole thing was ablaze in the sunset, throwing its light back into the park.

There was a plaque at his feet that Quentin couldn’t read. As soon as he thought about moving, he was at the base of the statue, touching the edge of the plaque.

_**In memory of Quentin T. Coldwater** _  
_**Magician, father, and friend.** _

What was the point of being dead if you still had to cry? Quentin felt Persephone come up beside him as he blotted his eyes.

“I heard the most unusual prayer earlier,” she said, her face gold in the light reflected off the statue. “Not to me – not even to Hades – to you.”

The bottom dropped out of a stomach Quentin didn’t have. “Did they build this today?”

Persephone shook her head. “Julia built this a year ago.”

“Julia,” Quentin repeated, suddenly a helpless child.

“Her conviction makes it very difficult for me to look in on your friends,” Persephone went on. “And yet.”

Quentin didn’t understand, but he couldn’t make the words. He shook his head. A noise came out when he exhaled, like a kicked seal. Persephone turned out toward the park, so Quentin followed her. Eliot was walking toward them.

Quentin had nothing left. His chest heaved with another wounded noise. Eliot, for his part, was an elegant silhouette against the sunset. A black cane led him forward, complementing the black of his suit. He came to a stop right beside Quentin. Close enough to touch, at last. And yet.

Eliot looked the statue up and down in silence and smiled. Even from the side, Quentin could see the sadness welling in his eyes. His hand flexed around his cane. He was in pain.

“I’m right here,” Quentin whispered. “Eliot, I’m here.” But why? What was the point?

Like Eliot had heard him, he reached up into his jacket and pulled out a white envelope sealed in wax. On the front, Eliot had written a single letter: **Q**. He turned it between his fingers, tapped it against the base of the statue like he was considering something, then he set it down.

“Imagine my surprise,” Persephone said, church-quiet. “A boy like _Eliot_ , so burned by everyone else’s gods, and yet so full of love that all he can do with it is pray.”

 _Love_. Quentin’s heart screamed.

“You don’t know him,” he spat. _Not like I do_.

“Maybe not.”

Quentin wished she would just let him be angry. He sensed that she was about to say something else, but Eliot shifted - his head first, then his whole body. Quentin looked right into his eyes and Eliot didn’t acknowledge him. It was The Monster all over again.

“He can’t,” Quentin whispered, like this whole visitation was a bubble that might burst. “Can he?”

Eliot shook his head quickly, squeezed his eyes shut, and turned toward the sun. The prayer was over. Quentin was back in his chair, where Kevin was still waiting to take a step.

Persephone was still there, but Quentin didn’t look at her. He watched his hands instead. Clench. Unclench.

“We were wrong, Quentin,” Persephone said. “All of us. You and your friends had no place in our mess. Something awful is coming, and your friends will need you. Maybe – just maybe – I can help make this right.”

Finally, Quentin looked up. He found Persephone studying him closely, and smiling like she believed it. What was the point of being dead if you could still hope?

“You want to help?” Quentin asked. “Isn’t that against the rules?”

Persephone’s smile took on a new edge.

“I’ve had forty lifetimes with you and your friends,” she said. “I think I’ve learned a thing or two about breaking the rules.”

She vanished, leaving Quentin to consider Carroll and his Wonderland. Whatever rejoinder Kevin teed up, Quentin didn’t hear it: when he opened the book, Eliot’s letter was waiting for him.

**Author's Note:**

> My first fic in a literal decade and it's a fix-it for a storyline that has betrayed me? Groundbreaking.


End file.
